Who Owns Ideas?
September 18, 2008 - Copyright Abuse
I've been blogging on and off about copyright abuse for years now. But recently, I found a story via Cory Doctorow's site, and listened to it on my commute. Never have I been so acutely aware of how badly the global copyright system is broken.
When you download music or text from the web, you may be innocently breaking the law. Jim Lebans, a producer with CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, looks at the tangled world of intellectual property and how the digital age is challenging ideas about who owns our culture.
This 54 minute broadcast examines how creative works were originally viewed as being owned by the public to enrich culture, and how viewing ideas as being owned by their creators is a relatively new concept. It discusses how copyright was initally set at 14 years, and how it incrementally expanded to its current length: life of the author plus 70 years.
Although the program presents opinions from both sides of the argument, those ideas presented by Graham Henderson, president of The Canadian Recording Industry Association, don't hold water with me. He sticks to the old idea that copied works equal lost sales, and my opinion is that recording associations need to all go out of business now that artists can easily market and distribute their own works online.
The program also features interviews with the Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page, author Eric Flint, and one of my own idols, Cory Doctorow.